Yearly Archives: 2016

DJI’S PHANTOM LINE of consumer drones is the 800-pound gorilla of the industry. And now, the company’s latest flying machine, the Phantom 4 Pro, looks like it’s poised to be the new king of the skies. The Phantom 4 Pro is an upgrade from last year’s Phantom 4. You can now fly a full 31 miles per hour while obstacle [...]

HES Energy Systems raised a few eyebrows last May, when it announced development of a fuel cell-powered quadcopter that could potentially stay airborne for four hours at a time. While we’re still waiting to see how that one turns out, the company has in the meantime unveiled a new fixed-wing drone that’s impressive in its own right. [...]

Algorithms usually need thousands of examples to learn something. Researchers at Google DeepMind found a way around that. Most of us can recognize an object after seeing it once or twice. But the algorithms that power computer vision and voice recognition need thousands of examples to become familiar with each new image or word. Researchers [...]

Farmers in Queensland can now spray crops from drones after legislation was amended to encourage crop protection. The Queensland government has announced amended legislation that now allows the state’s farmers to use drones to spray their crops. Acting Agriculture Minister Bill Byrne said the changes to the Agricultural Chemicals Distribution Control Act 1966 and the regulations that [...]

Researchers based at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) have been busy lately, judging by their latest glut of futuristic video content. Seemingly out of nowhere, the Center dropped no less than 34 YouTube clips on Tuesday, showcasing some of its most cutting-edge work, from human exoskeletons to Mars rovers to robotic praying mantises. We [...]

The unmanned aircraft Global Hawk flew above hurricanes Gaston, Hermine, Karl and Matthew and in front of Hurricane Nicole, deploying sondes — probes that automatically transmit information about surroundings. (TNS) — Cherokee Nation Technologies has a unique partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA to support hurricane forecasting and damage assessment. The [...]

Drones could be flying across America’s farmland soon. The Federal Aviation Administration has granted Clemson University a special license for researchers to pilot unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) weighing less than 55 pounds anywhere in the United States. One of those pilots is Joe Mari Maja. Maja, a sensor engineer, joined Clemson’s precision-agriculture research program two [...]

Drones, also known as “unmanned aerial vehicles,” have been used for military purposes since before World War I. Drones for consumer use have only been available for a handful of years, but they’ve become wildly popular in that short time. The first consumer drones were pretty pricey and required a steep learning curve, but today there are lots of budget-friendly [...]

One problem with 360° videos is that you usually see a tripod or a hand holding the camera. One exception is the throwable Panono camera, but obviously you’re limited to how long you can keep a ball hovering. Varavon has another alternative, with a three-axis-stabilized gimbal drone that can film a full 360° sphere without being visible in [...]

Even in one of the world’s most desolate areas, gridlock is still a problem. A ship on a mission in the Arctic Circle found itself surrounded by blocks of ice this summer. So the ship’s crew launched an autonomous drone for a bird’s eye view of its situation. Rather than attempting to steer through a [...]